Fearless
by lola.c.prior
Summary: Sequel of To Have and To Hold; Isabelle Prior grew up in Erudite, but she learned how to jump trains when she was six. And true, she knows her parents are not from Erudite, but Isabelle has known that she's meant for Dauntless. Born without the fear gene, Isabelle knows that nothing is going to hold her back from choosing Dauntless and finally fitting in, not even being Divergent.


**A/N It's so great to be back in this story-mojo! And I have a feeling you guys will like this story! So without further adieu, I give you Fearless:**

**Isabelle Prior grew up in Erudite, but she learned how to jump trains when she was six. And true, she knows her parents gave her to her uncle to raise her in Erudite, but Isabelle has known that she's really meant for Dauntless. Born without the fear gene, Isabelle knows that nothing is going to hold her back from choosing Dauntless and finally fitting in; not even being Divergent.**

**WARNING: I RAN OUT OF CHARACTERS IN THE SUMMARY, SO JUST SO YOU ALL KNOW: THIS IS THE SEQUEL OF TO HAVE AND TO HOLD. THANKS FOR READING THIS, BUT I SUGGEST YOU READ TO HAVE AND TO HOLD FIRST! **

**ALSO: I LABELED THIS STORY UNDER 'DIVERGENT TRILOGY.' AND, AS I'VE SAID BEFORE, I TOOK THE IDEA FOR THIS STORY FROM THE FEARLESS BOOKS BY FRANCINE PASCAL, BUT SINCE THAT IS THE ONLY THING THAT IS SIMILAR TO FEARLESS AND DIVERGENT, THIS STORY IS _NOT_ LABELED AS 'FEARLESS.' IF YOU HAVE NOT READ EITHER, I SUGGEST YOU READ THEM.**

**Onto the story...**

* * *

**Isabelle POV:**

Uncle Caleb jangles his keys, but other than that, the rest of the room is silent.

"Isabelle," he says. "Let's go."

The teacher pushes his glasses up and nods to me, signaling that it's okay to leave. But it's probably just because Uncle Caleb is here, and if all goes right, in a week he'll be the head surgeon.

Still, I don't dare talk. Fellow students give me awkward glances as I zip up my backpack and put excess books in my arm. We won't have tests for weeks, and I don't care if I study or not, but everyone expects me to, so I do.

Uncle Caleb looks at me. "Isabelle, where's your jacket?"

In truth, I lost it at recess when we were trying to recreate how Joseph said 'American football' used to be played. But I can't tell Uncle Caleb that. I scratch the back of my neck and say, "It's, errh, in my backpack."

A Candor girl gasps.

But Uncle Caleb doesn't notice. He just nods and guides me out the door. He takes me into a quiet corridor and turns his back to me.

I let my backpack fall from my shoulders to the ground. It makes a thunderous noise, and Uncle Caleb finally glances back to me.

"Isabelle," he whispers. "Where _were_ you last night?"

Before I can answer, he interrupts, "Don't answer that. I know you were out, most likely with some boy."

"No," I defend.

Uncle Caleb laughs. "Are you asking me to believe that you were studying trigonometry for all of last night?"

"I'm not asking you to believe anything," I say defiantly. "You can believe whatever you want. I'm just saying, the arithmetic makes no sense."

"_Trigonometry_," Uncle Caleb corrects me. "And I thought you understood it. I'll be happy to tutor you in my free time."

This time I laugh. "What free time? You're always experimenting with your test tubes and beakers, or following your boss around like a little puppy dog."

Uncle Caleb shakes his head and sits down on a nearby bench.

I suck in a breath. Six weeks. There's only six more weeks of waiting.

I've known since I child that I was perfect for Dauntless. Just seeing them jump on and off trains with their tattoos and dip-died hair always got my blood pumping. When I was seven, Uncle Caleb asked what I wanted for my birthday.

And I told him I wanted a tattoo of my mother.

I assume she, as well as many others, expects me to be mad at her. But I'm not. Sure, I would rather be in Dauntless, but I enjoy a challenge. And now that I'm sixteen, I can see why she entrusted my uncle to raise me; she was only a year older than I am now when she had me.

And you know what else Uncle Caleb told me? My dad was a douchebag.

I never knew my parents, but I knew from an early age that although my mother was raped, no one considered me an 'accident.' Everyone loved me. They loved my strength, my smarts, my personality.

But I doubt they like that I'm not meant for Erudite.

But for now, Uncle Caleb just wants to watch me like a hawk. He picks up my backpack for me, as I grab my excess books. "Let's go," he says. "You need to get started on your _trigonometry _assignment."

"How do you know my homework?" I call after him.

He stops as I catch up to him. "My dear," he says. "I know everything."

* * *

**Caleb POV:**

I run down the steps, just once having to break the rules. I had Isabelle take a practice aptitude test, and I need to manually change the results and reboot the entire system before anyone sees her results.

But before I can run any further, a door clicks open and a person wearing heels walks out. The shoes' clipping noise on the immaculate linoleum floor stops me, just as a familiar voice starts, "Hello Caleb," she says to me.

I turn to her. "Jeanine," I say with a smile. "What a surprise."

"Walk with me," she responds. "We have an important meeting to go to."

"About what, may I ask?"

"Isabelle."

I gulp. "Go on."

"Your-Isabelle is, well, rather fascinating."

"I know," I say. "And that's why I adopted her. She was safer off here."

Jeanine stops. "Safer from what?"

I don't answer.

"Isabelle is fearless," Jeanine says, her sharp voice piercing the air with each syllable. She continues to walk. "And we, as doctors, would like to study here."

This time I stop. "For what?" I ask.

Jeanine shakes her head. "Follow me."

She leads me into a fairly large meeting room. "Make yourself at home," she says.

I sit down in a chair that's close to the back of the room and set my briefcase down by my feet.

Other doctors soon start to walk in through the door, and after ten minutes, Jeanine closes it. She's always been punctual.

She pushes her glasses up and fixes her posture. "As you know, we have kept a close eye on Doctor Prior's niece, Isabelle Prior. She, having a mother who nearly suffered a miscarriage, was born without the fear gene."

This raises commotion in the room and Jeanine raises her voice. "Quiet," she says, just loud enough for the noise to die down. She presses a button and a screen appears on the wall. On it shows a scan I took of Isabelle's brain when she was six, when she was ten, and just last month.

As Jeanine continues to talk, I straighten my posture and think about Isabelle's results.

What if they find her before the test? And what if they notice that she's Divergent and terminate her?

I stand up suddenly, my briefcase containing a typed-up three page summary spread noting Isabelle's results clutched tightly in my hand. "If you'll excuse me," I say. "But I have some very important business to attend to."

* * *

**Six Weeks Later...**

**Isabelle POV:**

It's finally time.

Time to take my Aptitude Test.

For the past six weeks, Uncle Caleb has kept me under very close watch. It's hard to practice jumping trains and doing summersaults and dips, even in my room, when I'm always being watched. He claims it's for my own good, but I wonder if it's just because of the Aptitude Test.

Uncle Caleb, for the past year, has given me a practice test every month, and he's still not happy with my results and will not show them to me. I've asked him countless times if it's because I did not, if I didn't, have the aptitude for Erudite, and his answer is always the same: no.

Still, I wonder, did I do something wrong? I wish he would give me an answer, any answer.

But Uncle Caleb only claims he does not know what to do about it.

"Isabelle Prior," a woman says now.

I rake my hand through my long brown hair and stand up. Breathing a sigh of relief, I close my _Trigonometry_ book for good and stand up.

This is it.

I half-run, half-walk up to the woman. She's fairly old, and Abnegation. _Natalie Prior_, her nametag reads. I stare awkwardly at it. We share the same last name, and I feel like I know her from somewhere. Although because Uncle Caleb was forced to cut off my contact with other factions years ago, I have never really had any friends or people I was close to.

Still, Natalie Prior smiles at me. "I remember you," she says.

I nod. "You're my..."

"Grandmother," she finishes for me elegantly. "Pleasure to see you again, Isabelle. Right this way." She leads me down along black corridor. "In here," she says, her hand out, directing me to walk in first.

"Sit down," Natalie says promptly. "I'll be with you shortly."

She leaves the room as I sit down into a chair just like a dentist's and comes back a minute later with a vial containing a cloudy white liquid in her hand. Natalie sits down, plugs in a bunch of metal wires into a computer, and hands me the vial.

"Drink this," she says.

I raise my eyebrows. "What's in it?"

Natalie smiles sadly. "I can't tell you that. Just drink it."

I shrug and slosh the chalky liquid down my throat. I cough once before I pass out into darkness.

This is it, the Aptitude Test.

But I'm not afraid.

I'm Fearless.

* * *

**A/N Well, there you go! First chapter, done! Feel free to leave a comment if you have any ideas for the second!**


End file.
